How Green does/will my Garden Grow?

     Living in Northern ( Almost in Quebec, Canada) Vermont, where I see just as many Quebec License plates as Vermont ones. The growing season she is short. When we bought the house up here on the mountain my daughter in law joked that since we are living on the North Face of the peak that we'd never see the sun.  Well we do see it but I admit to it being slow to come and fast to go.  But regardless both my Husband and I love to garden so it wasn't long before I started ...

 first with a few flower beds with natural stones surrounding them but then I kept looking at the grass.....
One day when my Husband had returned from his ship for a months holiday I said "Honey, why do we want to spend our time mowing that grass out front?" So it wasn't long before the tractor was digging it up!


wha la a garden has emerged !

We started with this center garden filling it with a few annuals , hostas and started "collecting" perennials  which we had around the property.  I built a few raised beds for more flowers and started some vegetables.  It wasn't long before I realized I really wanted a bigger vegetable garden though so...


This year we added 12 more 4x4 raised beds filling them with squash, cukes, peas, onions, carrots, beans, herbs, potatoes, corn and LOTS of tomatoes since we want to make our own pasta sauces and soups.

Now came the reason for this ... the plants are late, we don't get enough sun in the house to start seedlings until way late in the spring, I made a few make shift greenhouses this spring but they met with disaster after we had a 2' snow fall in April. I needed a more permanent solution and started scanning the web for small green house designs.  Finally finding one that I thought would fill our needs in an old gardening book I've had for years!

So I drew up the design and calculated how much wood I would need to complete the project and ordered the wood.

Now keep in mind some of this wood is for a couple more projects I am working on maybe I'l blog about that after I finish this one! ha!
The greenhouse base is 2x8 pressure treated wood so I hauled the 5 pieces I was going to need to start over to the "site".

Yes I was going to need to cut one board as the dimensions of the base will be 12x18.
I decided before I got the saw out I'd see how level things were.

Level? Well I guess I should of expected this since we do live on the side of a mountain. So I go and get the spade and think I'm really happy my Husband didn't use up all the crushed stone as I was going to need it to grade the base.

I finally got it close enough that I was going to have to dig the front down 4 inches and build up the back about 6 inches to get a level grade , now I wish the stones we not already around these beds as I'm going to have to rake them out so I can dig out the front.



Day two: I got distracted chasing a butterfly, wish I had my long lens on my camera though.!

So I finally got the level done and 3 sides squared up and I started filling in the ditch I dug with crushed stones we had ordered for the basement and used the extra around the gardens.

The East side of the greenhouse for sure sits higher up , our ground is really sloped here.
I'm going to get big rocks to put around the edges and fill it with crushed stones...or maybe get another piece of pressure treated wood to help fill the gap...still deciding on that one.

Done for the day since I needed to cut more 2 x8's the front I'm still debating if I should put plexiglass on the straight sides to protect it from the high drifts of snow we get...the back sits high enough already I think...

I think I've decided to just get alot of rocks to fill this, since they are free on the property..and I have the crushed stone for the inside.  It will just mean a few trips in the woods to find them!

I took  a walk inside the greenhouse to get  a feel for it. There are 4 raised beds  and I've already started my compost pile to help keep the heat in in the fall and spring.  I want to find a couple big metal barrels to put water in. , Right now there are tomatoes, Squash and cukes growing in here.:)

standing in the other side of the greenhouse I am standing where I will build shelving to hold trays of seedlings..:)

So thats it for today. Next I will continue adding the 2x8s' around the edges and add the 3' supports , doors will be at both ends so that will be next.







Stay tuned!